New research has suggested that mental health services are not getting their fair share of NHS resources.

A study by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health found that the money promised by ministers is not getting through to local trusts to deliver the intended improvements in patient care.

A spokesman for the DoH told ePolitix.com: "There has been a significant growth in spending on community services and new teams dedicated to helping those patients at crisis points.

"We question both the methodology and the accuracy of the report.

"The DoH has more robust, comprehensive and long-term data which shows a 6.3 per cent funding increase after inflation for 2001/03."

Forum Response: Sane

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity Sane, told ePolitix.com: "Funding for mental health services is now at a standstill, with new initiatives depleting core teams and services.

"When a person needs hospital care, wards are overflowing, staff overworked, conditions squalid and the traffic in doctors, nurses and patients in gridlock or chaos.

"Far from going forwards in that we have more facilities and more sensitive ways of treating people with mental illness, we are going backwards with a loss of 4,000 psychiatric beds in the past six years, 400 vacancies for consultant psychiatrists and a famine of nurses.

"We are seeing no improvements in the fundamentals of health care and we believe that the health services are putting lives at risk by failing to provide these."

Forum Response: Depression Alliance

Jim Thomson, chief executive of the Depression Alliance, told ePolitix.com: "Depression Alliance has campaigned hard to find out where the extra money promised for mental health is actually being spent.

"We have yet to receive an answer. Unfortunately, the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health's report confirms a lot of what we suspected.

"It is clear that mental health is not receiving the money it has been promised, let alone needs, and many of the current services and policies are designed to fail.

"However, it is interesting to note a growing consensus amongst healthcare professionals that by ignoring policy and treating the whole person (who may have depression, heart disease and a range of other illnesses not to mention related social problems, all at the same time!) instead of the separate illnesses, may result in better care for the patient, take up less of the doctor's time and make better use of already limited policies.

"Watch this space for more good news about joined up working and best practice in mental health."